Birthday(55)

“Surprised he’s not making you mow the lawn,” I say. Why am I bringing up Carson? Since my suicide attempt he’s said maybe two words to me that weren’t grunts.

“We had a fight,” Eric says. “Sort of.”

“Do you wanna talk about it? Is that why things were just ‘fine’ earlier?”

“Nah,” he says. It comes out clipped and flat, and I flinch because the tone’s so unlike him. The pressure thumps at my neck again, and for a moment my own anxiety is overwhelmed with the need to hug him. But I stop myself, worried how Eric will feel about my touch when he finds out what I’m about to tell him.

I look around the kitchen and realize that most of Jenny’s things are gone—her wedding china and the cookbooks that used to line the counter. Maybe she sent for them when she got where she was going, or maybe Carson put them in storage. Maybe he destroyed what he could and dumped the rest. That certainly sounds like him. The house is still clean without her, but sad without all Jenny’s little touches. Our trailer might be messy, and the dishes might sit in the sink for days sometimes, but at least there’s life there.

Eric pauses before he cuts into the cake and looks at me with sudden awe.

“Hold on,” he says. “Did you make this?”

I shove my hands in my hoodie pockets, look down at my shoes, and nod. It suddenly seems stupid to have baked and brought a cake. Like, what, I’m going to tell him I’m a girl, but look, cake. Stupid. Pathetic. Not for the first time I wonder if I want to be a girl because I’m a failure at everything. Perhaps I just want to create a new self entirely and leave the mess of this life behind. My eyes squeeze shut. That explanation has always been too easy—all the cruel explanations have always been too easy—and I know it.

Eric plants his hands on the counter and appraises the cake. The coconut didn’t brown enough and the frosting isn’t consistent, but it looks like a cake and smells like a cake and that’s what counts. I guess. As I watch Eric inspect my creation a sunbeam of pride breaks through the clouds, but only for a moment before my nerves get me again.

“Can we eat upstairs?” I ask. “So we can talk? I’d rather avoid your dad, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. Right.” Eric gives me a curious look, like he wants to know what I want to talk about, but I just give him a shrug. My heart beats in my ears.

He cuts us generous pieces and he inhales half his piece in the time it takes to mount the stairs. As we make our way to his room the weight of time pushes down on me. I feel surrounded by ghosts and memories. There’s me and Eric in a laundry hamper, screaming as we slide down the stairs. There we are at the bottom, near the door, lacing our boots with preschooler hands in breathless anticipation of one of the two snow days we got that winter. There we are at the top, strangely proportioned, like all sixth graders, sprawled on the stairs, listening to music even though we got yelled at for being underfoot and there were a million better places to be.

I close my eyes as we sit, and I try to will the ghosts away. When I open my eyes, I find Eric looking directly at me, a worried expression on his face. I place my untouched cake on the desk and cross my legs.

Tell him.

I swallow so loud I feel like it echoes.

He plops onto the foot of the bed, chocolate smudged at the edges of his mouth as he unselfconsciously licks crumbs from his plate. I laugh despite everything.

“What?” he says.

“You’ve got…” I start to reach out to rub the chocolate away, but stop myself. I lean back against his pillows, my heart hammering, and gesture toward my own mouth.

He smirks and wipes his face with the back of his arm.

“Okay,” he says. He sets his plate on the comforter next to him and his face grows serious. “What’s up, Morgan?”

“Before I say what…” My voice shakes so bad. “I just. Wanted to check. Are you doing okay? You can tell me if the fight with your dad was bad or if you’re just feeling upset or…”

“Susan broke up with me,” he says. His face betrays a little sadness, but then he shrugs.

“Seriously?” I ask, although the news isn’t that surprising. If I were his girlfriend, and he blew me off as much as he’s blown her off, I’d probably break up with him too. “What happened?”

“The specifics?” he says. “I lied to her about skipping practice. I haven’t been prioritizing her. The flame’s just kinda gone. But … I don’t know, I guess she had a plan for the sort of person both of us were gonna become, together, and I veered off course.” Sadness creeps into his voice and I do my best to listen. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, though. It just happened.” He sighs and crosses his legs. “I don’t think we have much choice in who we turn out to be, as much as we might want to.”

“Yes,” I say, surprised by my own intensity. “Yes. I think that too.” I swallow.

The thing is, after all this time I still don’t really know how to put this into words. I’ve tried so many ways, rehearsed this conversation so many times. Do I say I was born in the wrong body? A girl trapped in a boy’s body? Do I even believe in souls, or girl brains and boy brains? But if I say, “I am a girl,” doesn’t that kind of fly in the face of my present circumstances, how people see me now? How everyone has always seen me? On the other hand, doesn’t “I want to be a girl” almost make it sound like playacting? I realize I’m chewing my thumbnail.